Some people say that oppressing the people more, or harming them (in the form of chucking bombs at them for example) will make the people more politically motivated to bring about a revolution and completely free them from the shackles of the state. They argue this will avoid any reformist moves to compensate and give the people superficial liberty thus suppressing the people with their own naivety into thinking they're free. While this may be true about the motivation, it motivates the people very superficially, makes them desperate to escape the regime and in some cases it can actually turn them away from the cause the properganderists by the deed are trying to turn them on to. For example in spain in the late 1800s - which has historically been quite an anarchisticly influenced country - anarchism suffered horribly because anarchists were promoting violence though propaganda by the deed.
I was talking with an anarchist the other day and he said that apartheid should of not been ended in the way that it was. I was quite shocked and so i pressed him for more details, he then said that if apartheid had been allowed to continue (no pressure from the west etc) then the black people probably would of risen up and very quickly started a revolution, instead, he said that reformist measures were put into place and things haven't improved greatly for black people in south Africa. Very true and things still aren't great for black people in south Africa, but if apartheid had lasted up untill now that would of been much more suffering than would of been necessary. No one apart from people in that position (and even then they can't force it) can even dare to ask other people to stay in that position for a bit longer. I believe that it is necessary to educate people at any age. Educate them that it makes absolutely no sense to hate on other people full stop. Let alone because of someone's skin colour. Educate a way of peace for the world and make them see that the advancment of the human race, whether personal or global, should be put above all other matters.
I believe that instead of opressing the people to force them into a revolutionary style situation you should work on giving them personal liberty*, whether that is through reformist governments or starting up communes from under the watchful eye of the state. When personal liberty is achieved most people will inevitably forget about over throwing the state as things like mass media and activities in everyday life take over. It is then the job of the people who still care about over throwing the state to draw people back to that idea and show them why having a state is bad and why an anarchist society would be better. It is then up to the people to decide what to do. Afterall the main principal of anarchism is to not force your opinions and ideas on other people. So you can't suddenly force other people to live without a state is they dont want to.
Anarchists do have to take pretty hard measures sometimes to get people to listen to our message. We are up against some hard opponents when it comes to propaganda. The whole of the main stream media will always as a rule of thumb be against anarchism and pro-state. There might also be social reasons for someone not to support anarchism, for example they might fear being blacklisted and therefore loose job oppertunities and the like. But anarchists' and the states' raison d'etre are rooted in completely different philosophies and, if you like, are in a constant state of war for peoples minds and support. The anarchists want whats best for the people and the state wants to conserve the power it holds while throwing a token of power to the people. This is not to say that people working for the state - for example opposition party mps - dont want to bring power to the people (for example caroline lucas the green mp for Brighton I would say definatly has the peoples' intrest at heart) but when they get into government they will inevitably be sucked up by the beauracracy and churned over by the system that is the state, regurgetated and moulded (usually by advisor's and the like) into someone who is so interested in international affairs and upholding the law of averages (see my first blog post) that they often ignore the people or inadvertantly take power away from the people.
What i would also say to those people who still believe that oppressing the people is the way to make them revolt (and revolt well) is look at case studies. For example russia has been under autocratic rule for centuries (and has only just calmed down to a mild dictatorship). Have the people revolted? Well yes, in the late 19th century to the 1920s but look at what happened then: because the people were in dictatorship before the revolution, the revolution was relativly disorganised and as a result got hijacked by several autocrats (ironically the only semi man of the people later being exiled in Mexico). Since the late 1910s there have not been any big revolutions there, and protests not big enough to bring down the government. All over the arab nation there has been sweeps of revolutions - or revolution type protests - recently (whether good or not only time will tell) that have shaken dictators out. The only thing is these dicators have been in power for decades mostly. Why are they only being kicked out now? Because the people sense a momentum and are very quickly choosing to move along with it. This was not sparked by years of oppression (although that's certainly the issue of why they are revolting) but instead from events from within Tunisia. They can feel the solidarity that has swept the arab people. And the western world is feeling the ripples off it as well.
How has it got to this stage in human life when the government can actually be accusing the people of hindering society and draining the resources. The people are only a reflection of the society they live in. So perhaps instead of coming down hard on these "thieves" they should actually be trying to change society that motivates people to work. I have already talked about how trying to force people to revolt will never end well. Trying to force people to work with threats of taking away their safety net only undermines peoples confidence and trust in society and only gets them superficially working. It may sound stupid but if people do not want to do something and you force them to, parts of society will crumble, it may look completely unrelated but the reason will be there. This is not just a crack at The ConDem government that is in now in power but also at New Labour and any other government that believes it can force people to get society moving.
I believe that every single human being has the qualities of greed and laziness, but only to some extent. What qualities we want to see in people needs to nurtured by society. That means that at the moment we are nurturing peoples materialistic, violent, greedy and lazy sides. I am not saying this is entirely the governments fault. but rather the failings of society as a whole. The one idea that I do think every anarchist should force upon the people is that, as long as it does not inflict negatively on other peoples lives, live however makes you happy. Other than that people are free to make up their own minds.
*I say personal liberty, I mean anything from the western european governments to complete anarchistic freedom
No comments:
Post a Comment